great list no 1
great list no 2

New York Book Review

Michael Ruhlman. The Soul of a Chef English 641.50922 RUH -[COO] (orch, cck, jw)

some reading suggestions


The Sea, The Sea, by Iris Murdoch.
Virginia Woolf-- The Voyage Out
Non-fiction: Nickle and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenbach
Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities
19th century: The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins


Graham Swift: Last Orders.
Jeffrey Eugenides: Middlesex
Tim O'Brian: July, July
Leif Enger: Peace Like a River
Sebastian Faulkes: Birdsong
Margaret Drabble: Seven Sisters
Iris Murdoch: Jackson's Dilemma

Here's a couple of oldies:
George Eliot: Daniel Deronda (big novel)
William Faulkner: The Hamlet (shorter, NOT experimental style)
Dickens: Oliver Twist

currently reading: The Emperor Of Ocean Park. just finished with Dave Eggers' Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius. i will have to disput e the 'staggering genius' bit. i think he did a good job and it was an interesting work but staggering genius. ha.

had to return the books so was only about 3/4 of the way thru Sophie's Choice and about 1/4 thru The Invisible Man (The Wells' one) and then had to say goodbye. when they were returned, discovered to my horror that The Trial was still sitting on my table, looking all forlorn by its lonesome self. so i dashed to the PC, got onto the Internet and clicked on the RENEW slot, suffering a 50cent fine in the process. but it's better than if i had actually already read the book and then discovered it. this way iget another miserly 3 weeks to read it. 3 weeks!!! and one borrower only gets 4 books!!! i think it's good to have a limit .... some pp might borrow heaps of books (like i already do ....having 'stolen' 2 other cards) and never let others have a chance to read them.
but this sudden dearth (is that the right word?) of library books have given me a chance to focus on the books that have been lying in my room waiting to be read. there's a good side to everything!!

Ok finished that lot of books! (except the John Cheever) he's got a heap of stories in there and almost all of them are brilliant so i'm just taking my time to finish it. heck even if it means paying the 50cent renewal fee at the library!
also just picked up The Music Room by Dennis Macfarland. haven't really begun it yet but it seems to open with the suicide of the main character's brother. depressing? hardly!

it's not as if i haven't been reading. i just haven't been posting. currently attacking three books and wondering if i can get them back to the library on time! Stories Of John Cheever, COme And Go Molly Snow, The Fourth Hand
Definitely relishing the John Cheever. He is so brilliant! I savour each word, each description that i'm reading so slowly. And it is quite a thick book. I guess it's good in some way that it is a collection of short stories cos if i really can't finish i can return it and let it be. it won't be as if i didn't find out the ending of the book.
and The Fourth Hand is more of Irving's really strange ideas. i guess he was inspired by that guy who got the hand transplant in ....Austr? NZ? and it turns out he was a convict. well the book isn't like that but it does mention that. and interestingly, it does not have a bear in the book, only a lion.

read Kelly Gang. now why did i hesitate to read this book for so long? it's excellent. i took only 2 days to read this. i would rate it a 9er!
now gettin to work on John Cheever's short stories. the first i read so far is good. he's got this way of describing things, people, places that i admire. nothing too long-winded or confusing. his choice of words is simple yet very pleasing. i wish i could say more but can't

took my books in and took another five out.
Finally readin: Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang
Mary-Ann Taylor Hall's Come and go Molly Snow
Stories of JOhn Cheever
JOanne Harris' Blackberry Wine
JOhn Irving's The Fourth Hand (one of my fave authors but doesn't look as interesting as his other books - but then again what could beat The World According To Garp?)

alrighty! books due tomoro. luckily i've got almost everything read. yah managed to finish Brothers K. mazing story. that's unfortunately all i can say about it.

also managed to finish Happenstance by Carol Shields. Fell in love with her Stone Diaries ages ago when it was done in my practical criticism class in jc. this novel was vastly different less rich description-wise but also pretty good. less complicated actually.

CR: the Brothers K
i didn't expect it to be that long, and it is pretty long. yet i've managed to stay with it so far, being about halfway through at the moment.
unfortunately, i don't understand some parts of it, those that refer to baseball (and that's a whole lot).

i'm from a non-baseball nation. i've never played it, never seen it bein played. (also cos i don't have cable)
so it's kinda hard to comprehend the obsession that the family has with it.
yet Duncan's writing style, and his compelling characters keeps me going. i love the brothers, how different they all are and yet similar.

i just hope that i can finish it before it's due back at the library! (which is unfortunately pretty soon)

Have decided to be lame and post the books i read in 2002.
long list. well not that long. could be much longer, if i wasn't glued to the TV/Computer!
January/02 A. S. Byatt - The Biographer's Tale (Unfinished)
January/02 Charles Dickens - A Tale of 2 Cities (Unfinished)
January/02 Garrison Keillor - Lake Woebegone Days (7)
January/02 Haruki Murakami - south of the border, West of the Sun (7)
January/02 Joanne Harris - Chocolat (8)
January/02 Kate Atkinson - Emotionally Weird (6 1/2)
January/02 Mervyn Peake - Gormenghast (8 1/2)
January/02 Michael Chabon - The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (7)
January/02 Wallace Stegner - Angle of Repose (7 1/2)
January/02 Wei Hui - Shanghai Baby (7)
February/02 Elizabeth Berg - Open House (7 1/2)
February/02 Ha Jin - In the Pond (8)
February/02 Jim Crace - Being dead (8 1/2)
February/02 Kate Walbert - Gardens of Kyoto (7)
February/02 Nick Hornby - How to be Good (7)
February/02 Peter Carey - Oscar and Lucinda (7)
February/02 William Gibson - Idoru (8)
March/02 Deborah Moggach - Tulip Fever (8)
March/02 Ernest Hemmingway - A Moveable Feast (9)
March/02 Fannie Flagg - Welcome to the world baby girl! (7)
March/02 James Welch - The Heartsong of Charging Elk (6)
March/02 Peter Hoeg - Miss Smila's Feeling for Snow (7 1/2)
March/02 William Gibson - The Neuromancer (8)
March/02 Zadie Smith -White Teeth (7 1/2)
March/02 Zora Neale Hurston - Their Eyes Were Watching God (8)
April/02 Anne Tyler The Clock Winder 8
April/02 Douglas Coupland Miss Wyoming 7 1/2
April/02 Graham Swift The Sweet Shop Owner 8
April/02 Helen Fielding Cause Celeb 7
April/02 James Eugenides The Virgin Suicides 8
April/02 Joyce Carol Oates Man Crazy 8
April/02 Milan Kundera Unbearable Lightness of Being 7 1/2
May/02 Andre Dubus III House of Sand and Fog 8 1/2
May/02 Charles Dickens The Prince and the Pauper 8
May/02 Richard Adams Watership Down 9 1/2
May/02 Alice Walker Local Girls 8
June/02 Bernard MacLaverty Grace Notes 7 1/2
June/02 Hans Koning Pursuit of a Woman on the Hinge of History 7 1/2
June/02 Virginia Woolf To the Lighthouse 7 1/2
June/02 Richard Russo Empire Falls 8
June/02 Joseph Heller Catch 22 8 1/2
June/02 W. Somerset Maugham Don Fernando 9
June/02 Julian Barnes England England 6
July/02 Christina Schwarz Drowning Ruth 7 1/2
July/02 Jasper Fforde The Eyre Affair 9
July/02 Julia Alvarez Yo! 8
July/02 Mona Simpson A Regular Guy 4
July/02 Tom Robbins Skinny Legs and All 8
July/02 Kent Haruf Plainsong 8
July/02 W. Somerset Maugham The Moon and Sixpence 9
July/02 Amitav Ghosh The Glass Palace 8 1/2
August/02 Breena Clarke River Cross My Heart 7 1/2
August/02 Edmund White Forgetting Elena 4
August/02 Jonathon Lethem motherless brooklyn 7
August/02 Louis De Bernieres Captain Corelli's Mandolin 8 1/2
August/02 Mo Yan Shifu You'll Do Anything for a Laugh 8
August/02 Peter Mayle A Dog' Life 8
August/02 Sinclair Lewis Babbitt 7 1/2
September/02 Deborah Moggach Porky 8
September/02 Haruki Murakami The Elephant Disappears 7 1/2
September/02 Isabel Allende Daughter of Fortune 8 1/2
September/02 Willa Cather My Antonia 8
September/02 Terry Pratchett The Truth 8 1/2
September/02 Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan of the Apes 7 1/2
September/02 Graham Swift Waterland 7
September/02 Louis Begley About Schmidt 8
October/02 Schlumer The Soul of a Chef 7 1/2
October/02 Alexander Dumas The Three Musketeers 8 1/2
October/02 J. D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye 8 1/2
October/02 Laura Esquieval Swift as Desire 7 1/2
October/02 Jonathon Franzen The Corrections 8 1/2
October/02 Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre 9 1/2
October/02 Anita Brookner Altered States 8
October/02 Julian Barnes Metroland 8
October/02 Richard Rayner The Cloud Sketcher 9
October/02 Pat Barker Border Crossing 8 1/2
November/02 Julian Barnes Love Etc 5
November/02 Katie Singer The Wholeness of a Broken Heart 8 1/2
November/02 Greogry Maguire Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West 8 1/2
November/02 Charles Baxter Feast of Love 8 1/2
November/02 Gail Anderson-Dargatz Recipe for Bees 6
November/02 Joyce Carol Oates Wonderland 6 1/2
November/02 Alice Adams Caroline's Daughters 5
November/02 Richard Russo - Nobody's Fool (9)
November/02 Hanif Kureishi - Gabriel's Gift (8 1/2)
December/02 Sebastian Faulks - Bird Song (7 1/2)
December/02 Glenn David Gold - Carter Beats the Devil (9)
December/02 Michael Chabon - The Mysteries of Pittsburg (8 1/2)
December/02 Saul Bellow - Ravelstein (8)
December/02 Elizabeth McCracken - The Giant's House (8)
December/02 Susan Orlean - The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup (8 1/2)
December/02 Terry Pratchett - Hogswatch (8 1/2)
December/02 J.R.R. Tolkien - The Two Towers (9 1/2)

Currently reading: Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee by Meera Syal. Her name might sound familiar to non-readers...but probably only if you are a fan of Goodness Gracious Me. I do believe she plays the wonderfully catty Smita Smitten.... the woman with the means to get into celebrity circles, or so she'd have us believe.
Delightful story bout 3 Asian women in the UK. her characters are funny and quite well-developed. Only about 1/5 of the way through though.

Susan Orlean's The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup - a great collection of feature stories she's written and had published in various magazines. She tells true tales of several varied characters. From a female toreador, to a grown-up girl band that never quite made it, to a champion dogshow dog. She observes and brings us into their lives but never intrudes on their privacy. Also the author of The Orchid Thief, which I haven't read yet and am trying to get my hands on, Orlean's writing is vivacious and graceful.

it's the last few days of the year. goodbye 2002, hello 2003!
Currently reading: The Two Towers, second in the Lord of the Rings series, but of course you knew that.
And I have learnt that Peter Jackson has taken matters into his own hands and made quite a few changes! Eowyn (the fair-haired maiden in lust with Aragorn in the movie) is not such a prominent character. In fact, she doesn''t even head to Helm's Deep! And neither is her brother such a hero. Eomer is not the saviour of the warriors at Helm's Deep. He's actually been following the king and the rest of the merry band to Helm's Deep and it is another fella Ekenbrand i believe who leaps in with Gandalf and an army of about a thousand, to help them out in the final battle. Ah well.
My bookbound resolution -- read more, read well.
Good reading everyone!